


The (little) Things

by Obsidian_Arrowhead



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ... probably, Angst, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Hinata Shouyou & No one, Hinata Shouyou-centric, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mentioned Hinata Natsu, Mentioned Naoi Manabu, Mentioned Nekomata Yasufumi, Minor Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi, Minor Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi, No Fluff, No Spoilers, Not Canon Compliant, Suicide, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, also 'Tiny Giant', also autocorrect no the names are not spelt wrong-, also i mean no one pointed out the clash but ah well i got bored and hyped hehe, also rip the Battle of the Garbage Dump, and stay safe ya'll!, enjoy (:, feel free to point stuff out (:, good luck haha, have fun hehe (:, have fun hehe (;, heh, hi! it's Dec17 and I'm back to edit so-, i guess, if that bothers you then dont read :/, like at all, little gettit-, not 'Little Giant', ok anywho-, or otherwise - Freeform, reread if you want but I'll explain the little changes in the an (;, so sorry if there's anything inconsistent, so up to chapter... 189ish, the the whole thing kinda is tbh, the wingless crows, though also the opposite, though for best angst potential i advise knowing... at least how season 3 ends, warning for missed opportunities, well not past episode one lol, written by someone who's only seen the english version of the anime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Obsidian_Arrowhead/pseuds/Obsidian_Arrowhead
Summary: A little orange haired boy bikes past an electronics store.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Everyone
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	The (little) Things

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is my first fic on ao3, let me know if you think I should change the rating! I put it as teen just to be safe, but it's really not all that bad... at least I don't think so heh.  
> Also! Tagged as 'major character death' because I mention the ages they are when they die, but it's not too graphic and really just there cause I wanted to be angsty... oops.  
> I might come back and write some more for this fic later on, though if I do it would be in a different format. No promises though (:  
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Edited on December 17 2020!  
> I changed a few things to make them make more sense, fixed up that one clash, and actually proofread it finally.  
> Changes will be in the end note, if you don't want to reread the whole thing (:

Life passes by in flashes. Sometimes we don’t notice how important a simple flash was until we’re well past it. Sometimes we don’t even look back enough to realise it… because some things become so well-ingrained, so  _ natural _ , that it can be hard to imagine a life without them. These can be things such as a person - think about it, when did you meet? What were your first words? Chances are, unless it was important at the time, you don’t remember - or a place that calms you - how did you come across it? When did it start? - or even something as simple as the route you walk to school each day. For most people, there is at least one thing like this - one thing that, were it not for an especially kind set of coincidences, no one would ever have even known about it - one thing that is so very inputted upon our actual DNA, it may seem, that we cannot imagine a life without it, can barely remember a life before it, even when it might be a relatively recent occurrence.

You’d never know, now, of a life without it, but back then you’d probably barely ever thought of it.

Such was the case for a certain Hinata Shouyou, of  Karasu … well, that’s not entirely right, is it? Flashes, remember that. Certain flashes that we don’t realise the importance of until much too late… well, here’s one for you: Hinata Shouyou bikes past the electrical store in his hometown of Yukigaoka. He hears the name “Tiny Giant,” and stops, mesmerised by the game and the aforementioned Tiny Giant. Who knows if he and his friends still get their soccer pitch, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Hinata Shouyou does, eventually, get his volleyball team. Yes, at first it’s composed of three middle school first years and two middle school third years who don’t know the difference between a set and a spike, as well as himself, but it  _ is _ a team. Besides, the next year he gets a real team anyway, a real  _ high school team _ , and he…

Well. you get the idea, you know the story.

But there is a time in which this doesn’t happen. Now, nothing too dramatic happens, mind you - no one dies, there’s no car crash, no missing limbs or medical conditions otherwise - but there is one thing.

…

Looking back on it, Hinata Shouyou would never sense the flash that passed him by, never remember it, either. He would never blame it, because what is there to blame? He doesn’t know. No one knows, not here. Not now. Nobody picks up on it, because there’s nothing to pick up on. There is nothing but Izumi Yukitaka, currently of the Yukigaoka Elementary School’s basketball team, nothing more, betting the orange-haired boy, currently just of the town of Yukigaoka (of Yukigaoka Elementary School) that he can beat him to the soccer field, where their other friend by the name of Sekimukai Kouji, only of the Yukigaoka Elementary School’s soccer club, is waiting.

In the end, it is a pointless race. They’re both on bikes, and they both zip through town much too fast for it to be considered exactly  _ safe _ . Hinata Shouyou of the town of Yukigaoka - and Yukigaoka Elementary School - wins the race, and both Izumi Yukitaka and Sekimukai Kouji - of Yukigaoka Elementary School’s basketball and soccer clubs, respectively - join him in horsing around on Yukigaoka Junior High’s soccer field for the remainder of the relatively cold morning. They stay right up until they bike back through town, all three of them pretty tired and with not all that much stamina to keep them going the whole way, what with the uphill streets and the already-depleted-from-horsing-around-all-morning energy. Afterall, each of the boys are only eleven or so at the time.

…

In years to come, each boy will forget this day; put it down to ‘just another day’, which, to be fair, at the time it  _ was _ . They did the same thing the next week, and the week after, and sometimes played on Yukigaoka Junior High’s basketball court instead. They remember the schedule - week after week, how could they not? - but specific moments are hard to pinpoint, and this race - again, one of many - never comes up again in the slightest.

…

Sekimukai Kouji, at the time of the Yukigaoka Elementary School’s soccer club, goes on to play the sport throughout the rest of his time at the school, his ensuing three years at Yukigaoka Junior High, and his next three at Yukigaoka’s Senior High School, fittingly named Yukigaoka Senior High, and positioned two streets over and one street up from his junior high. He will later drop the sport in college, and end his life at the hands of a drunk driver at the age of 26, one university degree in architecture under his belt and an apprenticeship which went nowhere. Both Izumi Yukitaka and Hinata Shouyou attend his funeral, and this is the last time the three of them are together, though it’s only by room. The two still-living boys sit apart from each other, and they do nothing more than shake hands when they see each other.

Izumi Yukitaka, much like Sekimukai Kouji, and at the time of Yukigaoka Elementary School’s basketball club, plays his sport throughout both junior and senior high (as well as the rest of elementary) at the Yukigaoka schools. He plays in college, but only on the side. He’s never quite serious about basketball, but it’s always been something to do. He joins the world of dropouts, and moves to Tokyo after his friend’s death - this is the last Hinata Shouyou hears of him. He dies at 43, not alone but certainly not surrounded by people, either. He works a deadend job, the night shifts at the corner store, until the day he can’t reach his phone, lying on the floor of his apartment, unconscious from an unexpected heart attack. He’s found two days later, when the store manager doesn’t get a response call and goes out to check on him.

Hinata Shouyou, always just of the town of Yukigaoka, never anything more, lives his life feeling he’s missing something… but never aware of quite what that something is. He goes through Yukigaoka Elementary School, Yukigaoka Junior High, and Yukigaoka Senior High with grades that barely pass and never anything extraordinary about him. In college, he’s asked to join a game of volleyball, but declines. He’s too short; he doesn’t see the point; it’s not like he could do anything, right? His life ends by his own hands at the age of 52, older than both Izumi Yukitaka and Sekimukai Kouji ever got to be - not that he’s aware of that at the time. All he knows is that he was missing something, something important, but he never quite knew what it was. In the end, this is what gets him; he could have been  _ great _ , but he never gives himself the chance.

…

Hinata Shouyou - of nothing but his hometown - does not realise just how different everything is, just how different the 2012-13 volleyball team of his neighbouring town, Karusuno, in their Senior High School, would be. Just how different the un-2012-13-volleyball-team-of-Karasuno-Senior-High-School would be. Because it’s not really a team, not this time. Not even really a club, honestly.

…

Kageyama Tobio is a brilliant setter, yes, and with a just as brilliant mind, but with little to no regard for those around him. Because of this, it is near impossible for his team members to trust him, and he is not benched at Karasuno Senior High, so much as never played. Nobody reaches his sets, and the nightmare from junior high comes back full-force. It’s partially his fault, he’s well aware, but he doesn’t know how to undo it. All he needs is someone to set to, but there’s never anyone there… When he wonders aloud if he should jump off the roof at age 19, no one is there then, either. He does.

Yamaguchi Tadashi is never really anything special. He only started volleyball in the first place to play with Tsukishima Kei, and although he goes to every practice he never finds anything he’s particularly good at in the game, nothing he really has an interest in, no matter how much he wants to (because being the pinch server is ok, sure, but… it’s not as if _that_ ever changes anything, when he’s never once put in). Still, he stays with his friend until they both quit the volleyball club - and volleyball in general, really - at the end of their first year at Karasuno Senior High. he follows Tsukishima Kei everywhere, and the afterlife is no exception to this rule; they both die at age 70, together. Always.

Tsukishima Kei, speaking of, is put on as a regular and the team’s middle blocker in his first year. It stays that way until he quits the club, the same day as the then-current third years and Yamaguchi Tadashi. He never learns to love the game, never gets the point of it. He never tires himself out and he never particularly cares about any of this, just goes on with his life - and with Yamaguchi Tadashi by his side - the way he always figured he would, ever since that day in the gym with the freckled kid from the playground, ever since he’d found out his brother had lied. Volleyball becomes nothing more than a blip on his radar and that ill-fated relationship with his brother - Tsukishima Akiteru - who dies before he does.

Yachi Hitoka tries out the manager position… for approximately two weeks. She quits after, and goes through the rest of her life with an estranged mother (whom she never stands up to) and a college degree. She lands a job at an ad design company, thanks mostly to said mother, and moves to Tokyo, and lives out the remainder of her short life… she never quite knows how she figures out the ad company thing, but it’s there, and it works. She’s working, learning, alright, and alive, until she is killed in a tragic subway accident, crushed under the wheels which once took her back to her ‘home’. She’s 27, at the time.

Kinoshita Hisashi is always just… there. He doesn’t have anything special in his repertoire, much like Yamaguchi Tadashi, but he’s at least put in as a regular, in his third year. Even then, there’s not much to be done. Their team is fighting a losing battle, ‘wingless crows’ indeed, and they all know it. Still, he continues with volleyball until the end of his third year, and later joins a largely mediocre college team. He gets a job, marries, grows old, has a few kids. Sometimes he tells them that he used to play volleyball, but it’s never a big thing. It’s never important. He dies at 91, old and satisfied with his just being there.

Narita Kazuhito gets to spend some time on the court in his second year, simply because they need a second middle blocker. His play improves, yes, and he sticks with the sport until he finishes senior high, but that’s about it. He plays on the weekend sometimes, when he can find people to play with, but he never joins a college team - mostly because he never actually goes to college. He finds a job and sticks with it, and grows old with a few friends around him. He marries a man when he’s 64, simply because it takes so long for it to be acceptable, and _legal_ in Japan (though they’d met quite a bit before), and the two of them die together at age 89. That’s all.

Ennoshita Chikara becomes Karasuno Senior High School’s volleyball team captain in his third year, as a wing spiker and a regular since the year before. He is well aware they are low on numbers, especially with only one now-second-year, Kageyama Tobio, but he refuses to put the boy in a game because… well, you can’t have a setter not trusted by his team. He makes a first year the setter, and another their middle blocker, makes Kinoshita Hisashi a regular as wing spiker, and rues the fact that they still don’t have a libero. Later, he dies of a heart attack - a stress overload - on his 43rd birthday.

Tanaka Ryuunosuke sticks with volleyball right through until the end of college, even as his once best friend - Nishinoya Yuu - quits the team in their second year. The two grow apart, and he ends senior high having barely talked to the boy in the last month. He goes to college - if only really to play volleyball - and takes a job at his family’s store as soon as he can. His sister, Tanaka Saeko, marries a woman and moves to Tokyo, and he stays behind at the store, taking it over from his parents when they die. He dies, too, at 58, and the store shuts down for good.

Nishinoya Yuu never plays volleyball again, after Azumane Asahi quits the team at the start of his second year. He doesn’t leave right away, still goes to the training camp with Nekoma, even, but he doesn’t play. Just practices. If the other teams wonder why, well, they don’t need to know. It’s halfway through his second year, watching the game from the bench, that he finally tells Sawamura Daichi that he can’t do it anymore, and hands in his jersey. After, he goes through life like it’s a gray cloud, his usually cheery persona pretty much destroyed. He dies at 21, alone but forever unafraid.

Azumane Asahi waits, he does. Just what he’s waiting for, he’s not entirely sure - a final push, maybe? - but either way, it doesn’t matter. It never comes, and he never enters Karasuno Senior High’s gym number two ever again. He goes on with life, moves to Tokyo, answers his energetic kids’ (kids who remind quite a bit of a certain someone) questions about his time as the ace on his senior high team. He tells them never to give up, not like he did. If he tries to search for Nishinoya Yuu, well, no one has to know. His family all go to his funeral, when he’s 79 and gone for good (his family being his children, their partners, their children (for those who have them), and pretty much no one else).

Sugawara Koushi becomes Karasuno Senior High boys volleyball club’s regular setter in his third year, but with no ace to set to - not Azumane Asahi, at least, because while Tanaka Ryuunosuke might be called the ace now it just isn’t the same - everything kind of goes downhill. Sure, he sets just fine, but he shares Sawamura Daichi’s worries that their team is going absolutely nowhere. Which, well… it does. Does go absolutely nowhere, that is. They barely make it past the first round that year, and after that there is no one to pick them up, though quite a few try. He disappears from volleyball, though not from Sawamura Daichi, and they die together at 82.

Sawamura Daichi could have had a great team, back with Karasuno Senior High, he knows it, and he doesn’t exactly blame their disappearing duo, but it’s quite hard not to, really. He thinks that Kageyama Tobio _alone_ could have been great, but the boy is too selfish for a six-player game. It won’t work, and he doesn’t try to force it. Besides, he’s the captain, he can’t get caught up in the ‘could haves’. All they can do is work with what they’ve got. But the lack of libero is a glaring hole even he, defensive specialist though he may be, can’t make up for. He dies with Sugawara Koushi, the not-parents of a not-team which never came to fruition.

Shimizu Kiyoko never finds a manager to replace her, though she certainly tries. Yachi Hitoka seems like a good option, but the girl gets too nervous and backs out on them. She goes through countless first and second years, but she never finds anyone, and it frustrates her greatly. After school, she ends up together with some nameless man, and changes her name, but it doesn’t feel as much… as much as it could. He dies young, at 42, and she remarries a few years later. She dies after her second husband, at 97, and never quite knows how close she was, working as naught but another nameless nobody in places she never has any real interest in.

Ukai Keishin is convinced, somehow, by Ittetsu Takeda, to join as a coach for Karasuno Senior High’s boys volleyball club, by way of the promised Nekoma training camp. He stays for the game, tells them they need another wing spiker and a libero who will actually play, as well as much better defence, and watches them all lose horribly to the crow’s old rival school, a 0-2 defeat which leads them back to their beds earlier than anyone would’ve liked. After, he sees the boys sometimes - they come through his store, yes, but other than The Neighbourhood Association he never goes near volleyball again, not really. Sawamura Daichi tries to get him back as coach, but he refuses. He dies at 61.

Ittetsu Takeda never really learns the ways of volleyball. He gets excited at the start, lands them with a _temporary_ coach, but after the Nekoma thing nothing goes his way. The best he can hope for is a miracle, but something like that doesn’t come along very often. Eventually, his position as club advisor is handed over (he doesn’t mind all that much), and life goes on. He stays a teacher at Karasuno Senior High, and watches the boys - and girls, to an extent - volleyball club nosedive into barely anything. He’s dead at 52, before it even begins to grow again.

Ukai Ikkei continues his coaching at Lil’Tykes Volleyball Classroom, his health in too much doubt to really be able to do anything else. His grandson, Ukai Keishin, coaches at Karasuno Senior High for a while, and when he hears about their game - and subsequent terrible loss - against Nekoma (and Nekomata Yasufumi, Naoi Manabu), he can’t say he’s surprised, unfortunately, if a little disappointed. Guess high school rivalries aren’t always destined to have an end, huh? He never thinks much about the school(s) after that, though it seems to always come back to him; people don’t seem to be able to forget the coach who got his Miyagi Prefecture team to Nationals, once upon a time (once in a blue moon). It doesn’t change much, though, in the end (because he’s already so near his end), and he dies of cancer at 75.

…

A little orange haired boy speeds past an electronics store, once, and the flash is gone.

…

Things fall apart quickly after that.

…

Not much is different, the next few years. But when it becomes time for the orange haired boy to choose a senior high school, he goes with the one in his hometown, the same one his little sister will go to, and the same one recommended by their mother.

…

He never once bikes over those mountains, and that’s that.

…

The End.

…

(Life passes in flashes, and some of the most important ones are ones you’ll never know about)

…

(It’s always the little things, always)

…

(Always the little things)

…

(A little orange haired boy bikes past an electronics store)

…

(Everything changes)

..

(Yet no one knows)

…

(Afterall, it was just one bike ride, just one race, why would it have been the thing to change so much?)

…

(Just a little thing…)

…

(Little thing)

…

(Little)

…

(Little thing, indeed.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! December 17 me, if you'd read it first before then:  
> Hisashi officially became a regular wing spiker in his third year, sorry for the clash before!  
> Also Yams never gets to step foot on court because a) they had less games in the first place, and b) I can't really see Takeda knowing how a pinch server works tbh... also Yams got to practice a lot with Noya so-  
> I had Kouji and Izumi's names backwards I apologise - I tried to write them all the Japanese way-around - first name last, surname first - so... hope that worked! And hope I fixed it whoops again-  
> I... think that's it?  
> Well I now have more feels about the cats vs crows since reading chapter 293, so there weren't spoilers - I hope whoops - but I put more into Ikkei's part!  
> Also gender roles suck so I tried to... if not completely mix them up (because, well, it's still Haikyuu, let's be real here) at least change them a bit, as they're all older in this and (hopefully) more mature!
> 
> ... Back again because they'd be in Elementary when Shouyou bikes past whoops-
> 
> Also feel free to point out anything I've missed!  
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Obsidian.


End file.
